Even though we know that Verdi had to endure the ordeal of censorship, I consider his final version where the action no longer concerns King Gustav III of Sweden but the Governor of Boston to be the most coherent. Moreover, Verdi was not seeking deep psychological analysis in this work: at this point in his life, unlike what motivated him in Simon Boccanegra, he aimed to portray powerful emotions rather than to address political despair.

Here, the enlightened ruler embodies the symbol of buon governo, good governance, which from Act I onward in the governor’s audience chamber reveals his unwavering benevolence, despite the bass voices that, as in any nineteenth-century melodrama, represent traitors and conspirators. We also see the appearance of Oscar, the innocent face of fate, the messenger through whom good news arrives news that will ultimately prove fatal. The existence of Ulrica is likewise mentioned in this first act, so that traitors are shown to coexist within a world presented as harmonious.

Often in Verdi’s works, such characters are entrusted with embodying society’s outcasts. Ulrica belongs to that realm of intuition we have repressed, and in my staging this world is represented by a chorus of women, priestesses of a cult whose symbol is the serpent. Within this universe, it seemed interesting to me to portray Ulrica as a priestess of the voodoo cult.

The theme of the magical plant that grants forgetfulness the plant Ulrica invites Amelia to pick can already be found in Shakespeare, and this power of plants is also familiar in the Western tradition, with the myth of the mandrake, believed to spring from the final spasm of the hanged… When the governor, Riccardo, decides almost as a bravado to consult Ulrica, we clearly perceive the difficulty of this role: on the one hand, he is a “positivist,” as one would have said in Verdi’s time, yet within him there is also a taste for entertainment, and within the same character a blend of the comic and the tragic, as was already the case with the Duke of Mantua in Rigoletto: a frivolity mixed with gravity that Verdi delights in exploring.

The composer plays with this duality just as he plays with the irrational, in much the same way that today we mock horoscopes in magazines. Nevertheless, in her “off-kilter” vision as a marginal figure, Ulrica has sensed the presence of the conspirators… A single, pared-down set represents the audience chamber. I do not claim that this governor, Riccardo Warwick, is meant to resemble President Lincoln, but the set should evoke a spiritual elevation, of which the eagle is the symbol pride included. In this sense, it is a political set, though not a small drawing room where one waits for dispatches. I wanted it to be something larger and more lyrical.

As for its opposite side, there are no longer architectural elements, nor a glossy black floor, but rather the earth, a realm where the serpent having taken the place of the eagle is the totem, the symbol of a dark psyche: Ulrica’s domain, which the characters of the first tableau visit for entertainment. The eagle represents reason and power. The serpent represents the power of the night, darkness, and also the feminine, the chthonic. These are symbolic beliefs that have been obscured in our culture by historical pressures, yet have not disappeared. The true subject of this work is impossible love the deepest despair in love, stemming from the fact that, as in Tristan and Isolde with King Marke, the rival is one’s closest friend, and such a friendship cannot tolerate betrayal.

Thus, when the governor is stabbed during the ball, everyone becomes aware of this contrast: the utmost outward display of social life confronted with the most intimate realms of love and friendship. The result is that three lives are destroyed in the end. The darkness of tragedy prevails the hidden side, the black eagle. One curious detail appears in the cast list concerning Renato, who is described as “Creole.” Creole, that is to say, born in the United States. It is also specified that Creoles are present at the ball. Did the librettist have mixed-race characters in mind? What remains, in any case, is that through his intransigence toward his wife—bordering on sadism and through his jealousy, which is not without recalling Otello, Renato directly reflects a psychology characteristic of the nineteenth century.

In depicting this passion, it is as though Verdi were searching for a new form, even abandoning a grand entrance aria for Amelia, as if the very idea of the prima donna had already become obsolete in his eyes. One senses here that Verdi is moving toward his great works: Don Carlo, Otello, Falstaff… The great lyrical moments of Act II are supremely beautiful, when the music becomes most absolute an outpouring of lyrical emotion. As with Mozart, one ends up wondering whether one prefers the recitatives or the arias. But I never choose between the expression of feeling and what drives the action forward. To my mind, every cubic meter of the stage must be filled with drama and music. Such is the lesson of my old master, Strehler.